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Senior
US Democrats have demanded to know what President Bush knew and
when about the danger of terrorist hijackings before September
11. Yesterday the White House admitted that the
CIA had warned of a threat by terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden.
Senior members of the Bush Administration have defended their actions
but the Democrats want a public inquiry. The issue appears to have ended
the bipartisan support Bush has received since the attacks occurred.

Compere:
Tony Jones
Reporter: Tim Lester

TIM
LESTER: For eight months, Democrats have accepted if you want to criticise
the President, don't mention the war.

Not
anymore.

RICHARD
GEPHARDT, HOUSE DEMOCRATIC LEADER: We need to know what information
was given to the White House and what they did with it and we also need
to know why it's taken until now to find this information out.

TIM
LESTER: In an August 6 briefing last year,
the CIA warned President Bush Al Qaeda operatives might
hijack American passenger jets.

CONDOLEEZA
RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: It mentioned
hijacking, but hijacking in the traditional
sense and in a sense said that the most important and most likely
thing was that they would take over an airliner holding passengers and
demand the release of one of their operatives.

TIM
LESTER: To make her point, Condoleezza Rice used the word "general"
or "generalised" 19 times during
this briefing.

The
intelligence she says was far too general to predict what would happen
five weeks later.

CONDOLEEZA
RICE: I think it would be very hard to characterise
this as a warning.

TOM
DASCHLE, SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: Why was
it not provided to us and why was it not
shared with the general public for the last eight months?

If
the President's briefing was vague, there were other clues during the
American summer - an FBI memo on Arabs receiving flight training and
the arrest of the so-called 20th
hijacker, Zaccharias Moussaoui,
as well as other clues.

PHIL
ANDERSON, INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: What is
the vehicle, what is that would bring all those data points together?

You're
talking about federal, state, local and private sector productivity.

That
doesn't exist.

TIM
LESTER: Until now Republicans have been keen to make an issue of this
Administration's handling of last year's terror attacks.

They
see the President's performance in the role of so-called wartime leader
as an asset in the run to mid-term elections later this year.

Now
the Bush record is murkier.

The
President, who waged war on terrorists, is also the President who didn't
connect the dots.

DICK
CHENEY, US VICE-PRESIDENT: I've seen some developments this afternoon
and this evening down in Washington that I find frankly deeply disturbing.

TIM
LESTER: The Vice-President called the criticism unworthy and irresponsible
in a time of war and attacked threats from
Capitol Hill to upgrade inquiries into the administration
and intelligence pre-September 11.

DICK
CHENEY: Perhaps most important, an investigation must not interfere
with the ongoing efforts to prevent the next attack because without
a doubt, a very real threat of another perhaps more devastating attack
still exists.

TIM
LESTER: Post-September patriotism caused a surge in the President's
popularity from 50 to over 90 per cent approval.

As
one commentator put it, George Bush is now entering a non-teflon stage,
one where pre-September intelligence revelations could damage him and
the Republicans.

AMERICA turned on
President Bush last night for hushing up Osama
bin Laden's hijack plot.

Relatives
of victims joined Democrats in condemning Mr
Bush's decision not to reveal security service warnings that
the US faced a massive terrorist attack.

The
White House was alerted about the danger of al-Qaeda suicide hijackings
two years before the September 11 outrage - and the
FBI and CIA both sounded the alarm weeks before bin Laden's
men struck.

It
was revealed investigators warned in 1999
that al-Qaeda terrorists might dive-bomb a
hijacked airliner into buildings targeted on September 11.

DISASTER:
Bush faces allegations he didn't do enough to prevent the September
11 attacks

A
US federal report said: "Suicide bombers
belonging to al-Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land
an aircraft packed with high explosives - C-4 and semtex - into the
Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA or the White House."

The
astonishing prediction follows disclosures that President
Bush was briefed by the CIA on August 6 that a terror hijacking
plot could be on the cards.

White
House officials acknowledged yesterday that a battle plan to defeat
Osama bin Laden was waiting for Bush's review on SEPTEMBER 10.

It
was drawn up after intelligence going back to the mid-90s pointed to
the possibility of a skyjack attack.

Last
night the president was under siege as politicians and grieving relatives
of September 11 victims demanded "Why
didn't he let us know?"

Democrat
Senator Ben Nelson said: "Most people thought we didn't have a
clue. Now it appears we did. We didn't do enough with it."

Stephen
Raines, whose wife Lisa died aboard the hijacked plane that hit the
Pentagon, said: "It's shameful they knew as much as they did and
didn't warn anyone.

"They
put the business interests of airlines above the lives of citizens."

Desperate
to deflect criticism of being caught napping, Bush said last night:
"Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill
on that fateful morning I would have done everything in my power to
protect the American people.

"I
take my job as Commander in Chief very seriously."

The
1999 forecast was prepared by US terror expert Rex Hudson, of the Federal
Research Division, for the National Intelligence Council. The NIC, made
up of a dozen intelligence officers, is attached to the CIA.

Hudson's
report described a suicide hijacking
as possible vengeance for the 1998 US airstrike
against bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan.

REALISATION:
Moment Bush was told America was under attack

He
noted that al-Qaeda-linked terrorist Ramzi Yousef - arrested in the
Philippines in 1995 and later convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing - suggested such a mission against the CIA HQ.

The
report contradicts claims by the White House
that no one in government had previously imagined an attack
like September 11.

Research
chief Robert Worden said: "This information was out there to those
who study terrorism."

Last
night the White House hit back: "It wasn't intelligence suggesting
we had information about a specific plan." Earlier a senior official
said an "options memo" to defeat bin Laden was prepared by
Bush's foreign policy team.

It
was dated September 10 and sat on National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice's desk for Bush's review when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
were struck.

White
House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the memo recommended dismantling
bin Laden's network through what later happened in Afghanistan - co-operation
with the Afghans' Northern Alliance.

As
fury mounted nationwide at the latest revelations Donn Marshall, whose
wife Shelley died at the Pentagon, said: "It makes you wonder where
the get-tough president was when he received this information.

"Why
didn't they react more vigorously? The idea that American planes might
be hijacked should have caused more concern, even if we didn't think
they might be flown into things."

Demanding
a probe Kristin Breitweiser, whose
husband Ronald died in the World Trade Center, added: "I
want accountability." Newspapers across the country
ran headlines like "Bush knew",
"Did he do enough?"and "How dumb can intelligence be?"

Opinion
polls showed that almost 70 per cent of Americans thought Bush should
have revealed earlier that he had a warning of a potential terror hijacking.

The
White House mounted a furious rearguard action.

Vice
President Dick Cheney warned Democrats "not to seek political advantage
by making incendiary suggestions
in a time of war."

In
1994, the French authorities foiled a plot by Algerian terrorists to
fly a plane into the Eiffel Tower.

A
year later Washington was told of a plot to crash a jet into the CIA
headquarters. Police in the Philippines said terrorist Abdul
Hakim Murad confessed to planning to hijack an aircraft, storm the cockpit
and steer it into the building.

Last
July FBI agents based in Phoenix, Arizona, sent a memo to Washington
voicing concern at the large number of Middle Eastern student pilots
at flight schools around the country.

The
officials recommended an investigation should be launched but it was
turned down.

Then,
less than a month before September 11, Frenchman Zacarias Moussaousi
- the so called "20th hijacker" - was arrested in Minnesota.

A
request by the FBI to gain information from his laptop computer was
denied by the justice department.

(In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed
without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving
the included information for research and educational purposes.)

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